1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates to storage devices, which can include disk drives and solid state memory subsystems, for example. More particularly, this disclosure relates to techniques for managing metadata in a storage device to improve drive performance.
2. Description of the Related Art
Storage subsystems such as disk drives, solid state memories, and the like, often utilize logical-to-physical mappings to store data. Data is accessed using logical addresses from the mapping which correspond to physical locations on the memory device.
The storage subsystem may access the logical-to-physical mapping relatively frequently in order to locate data. Thus, the subsystem often stores a version of the logical-to-physical address mapping in a relatively fast memory (e.g., a volatile memory such as a DRAM). A copy of the mapping is also typically kept in non-volatile memory. This allows the subsystem to retrieve the mapping on power up, for example. Maintaining the logical-to-physical address mapping and restoring the mapping can be complex and resource intensive tasks.